


Better Luck

by RileyC



Category: Law and Order: SVU, Oz - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Christmas, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2011-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:44:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RileyC/pseuds/RileyC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Olivia never came back to the squad. Major Case loaned out Toby -- is it a temporary or permanent reassignment, though? It's up to Elliot to decide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better Luck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aletter2elise](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=aletter2elise).



> This was written for the LiveJournal holiday challenge, Oz Magi.

_Don Cragen: I'm not your type._

 _Elliot Stabler: I don't know, maybe I'd have better luck with a guy._

Choregraphed, Season 8

Elliot’s not expecting company. He’s not much in the mood for it. Long day, rough case, and he’s going to be a while sorting it out. Huang can tell him a thousand times it wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t have known … only it was, and he should have, and that guilt’s going to be with him for a long, long time.

That knock’s persistent, though. Whoever it is, they’re not going away – and that’s enough to tell him who it is.

He puts down the book he hasn’t been reading and goes to the door, leaving the chain on as he cracks it open. “What do you want?”

“Fuck, I don’t know, Stabler – maybe to come in?”

Elliot rolls his eyes; he’s done that a lot since Tobias Beecher came along. Toby’s that kind of guy. Still, he undoes the chain and opens the door wide, standing back to let him in. If he doesn’t, Toby will probably just camp out in the hallway anyway. He’s that kind of guy, too.

“What’s that?” he asks, nodding his chin at the bag Toby’s carrying.

“Sustenance,” Toby says and starts setting Chinese takeout cartons out on the coffee table.

Elliot has to admit it does smell good, and his stomach gives a rumble in response.

“Guess I arrived just in time – again.” The remark isn’t really pointed, but Elliot feels it hit home all the same.

“Guess you did,” he says, opening the fridge, reaching for a beer. What should he offer Toby? “Soda?”

“Sure,” Toby says, watching him pop the tops off the bottles, accepting the Coke Elliot hands him. He puts in down on the table, a napkin serving as a coaster – because, yeah, this apartment’s loaded with priceless antiques – and makes himself comfortable on the couch. He picks up the book Elliot left splayed open there, looks it over. “ _The Killer Angels_?”

Elliot shrugs, sitting beside him. “It’s about Gettysburg.”

Toby thumbs through it, pausing to read a few lines, nods. “Good to get away to a battle that was won and settled and a long time ago.”

Eyes narrowed, examining that comment for hidden meaning, Elliot just says, “My kids gave it to me for Christmas a couple years ago.” A lifetime ago; back when he thought everything made sense.

He doesn’t want to talk about that, either, and reaches for his beer, tipping back the bottle, aware of Toby’s eyes on him, filing things away. “What?” he says, setting the bottle down – not bothering with a napkin underneath.

“What?”

“You looked like you were thinking something.”

“I’m always thinking something, Stabler.”

Elliot can believe that. The expression ‘cut to the chase,’ doesn’t much register with Tobias Beecher. “I’m not an alcoholic.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

“Yeah, right,” Elliot grumbles, uncomfortable under that steady gaze. Not accusing, not challenging, just … absorbing.

“Gee, Stabler, paranoid much?” Toby says, but there’s a smile in his eyes, in his voice.

And that shouldn’t be funny, not after everything, but it is, and Elliot rests his head against the back of the couch, shaking with laughter.

“Feel better?”

“Not a lot.” His ribs are sore – again (how many times has he broken, fractured, or bruised them?), and now the pain meds are wearing off that throb’s starting up in his shoulder once more, from the scissors that’d been rammed into it. Taking anyone on trust is going to come a whole lot harder, and he has to wonder what impact that’s going to have on the job.

For all that, he’s not feeling quite as weighed down by everything as he had been just a few minutes ago.

 _And why is that_? he asks himself, leaning over to stake a claim on an eggroll because he really doesn’t want to examine that question too closely.

“So, you heading back to Major Case?” he asks.

Toby’s manipulating a pair of chopsticks with expertise. “You want me to?”

That catches Elliot unprepared. “I wasn’t aware I had anything to say about it.” Kathy had booted him to the curb without a word of warning; Liv and Dani had walked away without looking back. He’s grown so accustomed to that it doesn’t even cross his mind to expect anything else.

Strange to think he’s got a choice about this. It would be the first one Toby’s given him since they met.

Weeks now, since Toby’s walked into the squad room and parked himself at Liv’s desk – Dani’s desk, no one’s desk anymore – like he had every right to be there, like it was _his_ and it was everyone else who’d been the pretender.

What started out as a temporary reassignment for Toby – _”They’re loaning me out so Goren doesn’t get twitchy over me closing more cases than him.”_ – has already stretched out longer than it was supposed to, one more case, then another, turning up that Toby could bring something special to.

Like this last one, Toby spotting what Elliot couldn’t – didn’t want to: that the person stalking Elliot was the same one killing the prime suspects on three recent cases. If Toby hadn’t pulled it together entirely before Sgt. Ed Tucker hauled Elliot in on suspicion of going vigilante, well, Elliot didn’t have any hard feelings. Tucker having to eat crow was compensation enough.

If Toby hadn’t pulled it together when he did, how many more deaths would there have been? What if she’d (Officer Karen Hayes) branched out past suspects? She’d had pictures up there on that wall, that shrine … to him, his face plastered all over, newspaper clippings, all of them slashed through, defaced in a recent fury, the rage that had her plunging those scissors in his shoulder, that could have given her strength enough to kill him, if Toby hadn’t come crashing through the door … but she’d had pictures of Kathy, of the kids, of Liv and Dani up there too, each face circled like a bull’s-eye.

Toby sighs. “If you have to think about it this long—“

“It’s not that. It—“ Elliot sits back, looks at him. “You want to stay? The cases are brutal.” Dani couldn’t take it, wouldn’t even try – even if he’d asked.

“Major Case isn’t exactly tea parties and hula hoops.”

That’s true enough, and it makes Elliot wonder again why Tobias Beecher’s here in the first place. Harvard Law, high-priced defense attorney – what made him walk away from that and put on a badge? Toby’s said he’d tell him about it sometime. If Elliot sends him back to Major Case, though, it will always be a mystery.

He thinks about that, wondering when the hell he got all this power.

He shrugs, takes another swig of beer. “You can stay.”

“I know I can stay, Elliot.” Toby’s scooted around to face him. “Do you,” and here he pokes Elliot in the chest with the chopsticks, “want me to?”

Elliot tries to picture going back to work without Toby, and doesn’t much like what he sees. Someone else will be assigned to work with him, nothing personal, everything stone cold professional, and maybe that would be for the best. Hell of a lot less complicated, that’s for sure.

All of a sudden, though, he’s really, really tired of everything having to be stone cold.

“Yeah,” he says, “I’d like it if you stayed.” And then he braces for the kick in the gut, for Toby to say he’s leaving anyway.

Only Toby doesn’t.

Toby smiles and sits back, feet propped up on the coffee table as he shovels up food. “Good to be wanted.”

Elliot looks at him, nods. Yes, it is.

***

It’s weeks later, the holiday season, and Toby’s over again. He’s been over most nights, in fact. He spent a lot of this one decorating the Charlie Brown tree he’d brought with him.

Elliot must have dozed off at some point, because the last thing he remembers is George Bailey jumping into the freezing river to rescue Clarence, and now the television’s off and the only illumination in the apartment is coming from that tree. Like Charlie Brown’s sad little tree, it’s flourished unexpectedly under Toby’s care.

“Not bad, huh?” Toby asks, standing by the couch.

Elliot smiles (he’s done that a lot more lately). “If you do say so yourself.”

“Just one thing missing.”

“What’s that?” It looks fine to him.

“Look up.”

He looks up, at the sprig of mistletoe Toby’s dangling over him. “What’s that for?”

Toby gives him a fondly exasperated look, saying, “And you call yourself a detective,” just before he bends down to kiss Elliot on the mouth.

Clues he’d been afraid to look at start popping into place, and when Toby draws back, searching his face for answers, there’s not even a moment’s hesitation as Elliot reaches up for him, pulling him down to the couch.

“Merry Christmas,” Toby says.

And a happy new year, Elliot thinks as Toby’s arms wind around him and draw him down into a long, long kiss.


End file.
